Mohamed Chabâa’s consciousness of his national heritage and his interest in architecture both emerged at a young age. His concept of the “3 A’s”—art, architecture and the arts and crafts—grew out of his discovery both of the Italian Renaissance and the Bauhaus School during a period of study in Rome in the early 1960s. From then on, bringing together the “3 A’s” would become a central interest, a concept Chabâa would apply in various ways and fiercely defend throughout his long and varied career.

Architecture: A Love Story

Son of a master mason and site manager, Chabâa was born with a highly developed sense of space. His interest in architecture took shape with his first job after leaving the École des Beaux-Arts Tétouan, in the architecture department of the Ministry of Youth and Sport. Although he was originally employed as a designer-draftsman to work alongside the French architect in charge of building projects, he was rapidly promoted to the role of manager of ongoing works. In this position he soon learned the basics of architectural design and developed a taste for it. During his employment, Chabâa gained an understanding of the complexity of the architect’s role: imagining a building, sketching it out, drawing up plans, working out the technical problems linked to its realization without neglecting the aesthetic aspect. A few years later he obtained a place to study at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma, choosing interior design as his specialty. It was at this point that his interest in spatiality came properly to the fore.

In addition to the introductory course on the Bauhaus Chabâa attended after beginning his studies in Rome, he was also exposed to the architecture of the Italian Renaissance—which had retained an elevated status, its superiority to the other arts being based on its incorporating all forms of plastic expression within a single unity, as Vitruvius had noted long ago. To his delight, Chabâa discovered Rome was an open-air museum: sculptures, paintings, engravings, and many other forms of artistic expression were openly on display, fully integrated into architecture and urban space: piazzas large and small, churches, avenues, inner courtyards. The architectural lessons of the “Quattrocento” and the Baroque were everywhere. Certain Baroque buildings, where the art of ornamentation might be said to have reached its peak, reminded him of palaces and traditional houses in Morocco, where sculpted and painted wood, carved plaster, multi-colored glass and mosaics made of zellige tile (traditionally handcrafted and made of non-refined natural clay from the Fez region in Morocco) are deployed in abundance, enhancing the sensorial impact of manmade space.

Chabâa’s discovery of Western art in the new milieu of Rome opened up new avenues of thought, the lesson of Rome architecture as an inter-medial enterprise resonating with his own nascent ideas. Here was one possible model upon which to base his developing interest in exploring the relationship between art, architecture, and the arts and crafts. He quickly realized that for traditional Moroccan art there was no museum where one could admire the artistry of his countrymen. Moroccan creators did not produce work according to an agreed framework, as was the case in Europe or the Americas. Traditional Moroccan arts are integrated into architectonic space, particularly in mosques, religious schools and palaces, serving both functional and aesthetic ends. Chabâa made what was for him an important discovery: Moroccan artists, he thought, should stay close to architecture, since it is in Morocco’s architecture that traditional skills and a sense of the genius loci have always been and continue to be.

Around this time, Chabâa discovered the work of Pierre Luigi Nervi, an engineer/architect, whose highly technical constructions were truly works of art. By chance he managed to obtain an apprenticeship with this famous Italian architect. This led to other significant training positions that would garner him an indispensable experience of the architect’s.

Armed with his degree, in 1964 Chabâa returned to Morocco, joining an interior design practice. One project he worked on during this time was an assignment undertaken for the Pavilion of the NIO (National Irrigation Office) at the International Agricultural Fair of Casablanca, for whom he designed a mural clearly referencing urban space. Further opportunity to develop his interest in architecture, which by now considered the “mother of all the arts,” came with an unexpected event at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Casablanca, whose teaching staff he joined in 1966.

What happened was this: While preparing an end-of-year exhibition of students’ work, Chabâa contacted the office of city planning in Casablanca to obtain a site plan for the Shrine of Sidi Abderrahmane complex. These plans were to serve as the basis of an assignment involving designing murals for an imaginary tourist complex. Bernard Hamborjet, a young architect working at the time for the Franco-Moroccan Cooperation Program, had been tasked with producing the plans. He heard about the students’ work, was deeply impressed by the final results, and subsequently talked about it to his friend, the architect Patrice de Mazières. Curious to see the work, de Mazières paid his first visit to the school. Chabâa and de Mazières felt an immediate rapport. De Mazières was captivated by the avant-garde teaching method adopted by the teaching staff, which constituted a total break with the French Beaux-Arts tradition previously followed at the school. He also met Chabâa’s colleague Mohamed Melehi, as well as the director of the institute, Farid Belkahi. This was to be a crucial meeting, for it led to a series of collaborations between the architect and the three painters, working together on large public projects. At the time, these painters were working independently of each other on mural panels and artistic projects using existing buildings and architectonic structures. Chabâa sometimes designed ceiling lighting systems inspired by traditional craft motifs, or would write the signage of a place in Arabic calligraphy. The collaboration between Chabâa, his colleagues and the architectural practice Faraoui and De Mazières proved fruitful over a period of years, allowing the artist to realize his dream of working alongside and an architect, within the framework of one of the first attempts in Morocco to integrate art and modern architecture.

Chabâa was soon given a further opportunity to bring together the “3 A’s.” In 1968 he struck out on his own, creating Studio 400, a general and interior design practice. The firm represented a chance to further apply his concepts in practice. Among the many projects undertaken by the studio, Chabâa was careful to include several murals, for which he often referenced the formal language of traditional arts, as well as exploring how to use traditional materials and techniques when creating furniture and object designs. There are numerous examples of this approach in the Studio 400 archives, including work undertaken for the headquarters of the COMANOV company (1968), the National Office of Commerce and Export (1969), the Rabat-Salé Terminal (1969), the offices of RAM in Brussels (1969), and the Hôtel d'Oujda (1970).

Alongside his commercial work, Chabâa launched a series of art shows with a group of painters. Most famous among these is the exhibition he organized at the Place Jamâa El Fna in Marrakech in 1969, and in the Place du 16 Novembre in Casablanca that same year. Further examples include the 1971 open air exhibition at the lycées Mohamed V and Fatima Zahra, both in Casablanca, the show by Moussem d’Assilhah in 1979, and another at the psychiatric hospital in Berrechid in 1981. In addition, in 1987 his office designed several mural projects in Tangiers, which were placed across the city as part of its new master plan. All of these various projects helped to articulate Chabâa’s personal vision of art as something that should be integrated into the everyday life of individuals and made accessible to the greatest possible number of people—a position that went hand in hand with his notion of the urban milieu as a permanent exhibition site.

Teaching of Art and Architecture

With the creation of the first École Nationale de l’Architecture (ENA) in the early 1980s, a new opportunity came along for Chabâa, who was invited to teach a fine art course at the school. Many issues arose concerning the role of teaching art in the context of architectural training and how it might be done: should the school produce architects with a strong artistic sense or “artist-architects”? Chabâa was fascinated by this question. The lessons learned from Walter Gropius and Frank Lloyd Wright (his favorite architect) were in the forefront of his mind when considering this question, and their example inspired many ideas for the kind of direction he should personally take in his pedagogical approach. Around the time he began this new teaching post, Chabâa became friends with a group of young architects whose ambition was to add their own stone to the edifice of Moroccan architectural pedagogy. With them he opened a studio called “Art and Architecture,” where he presented seminars on contemporary Moroccan art as well as the work of Studio 400. He organized educational visits for students to contemporary art exhibitions, and meetings with practitioners in their studios; or he would invite the latter to the school to take part in a team-led workshop and exchanges with the community. Chabâa also maintained close links with the Association Nationale des Architectes et des Urbanistes, which had been behind the creation of the Ecole Nationale d’Architecture. With them he organized numerous activities within the school—creating a link with practitioners of Morocco’s various craft traditions—including seminars with artisans and study trips throughout Morocco, during which he always searched out traditional arts and handicrafts unique to the region he and his class were visiting.

Love of Traditional Arts

While still a young student in Tétouan, Chabâa often told the story of how on a study trip to the Alhambra Palace in Grenada during the 1950s, his encounter with the unparalleled refinement of the Andalusia’s master craftsmen brought tears to his eyes. The traces of their gestures, still intact after so many centuries, the perfect harmony between the architecture and the interior spaces they formed, deeply stirred his emotions. Chabâa had realized early on the importance of traditional arts and their impact on what he called “perception sensible” (sensitivity of perception), the development of taste and individual spirituality.

In 1985, while teaching at the École Nationale d’Architecture in Rabat, Chabâa had a chance to further a rapprochement between the modernist tradition and the traditional arts in yet another way. He was offered the post of Artistic Advisor to Mohamed Abied, then Minister for Arts and Crafts and Social Affairs. Abied assigned him the responsibility of managing all matters linked to the creative métiers, including the training of artisans. After some field trips to both the north and south of Morocco, Chabâa undertook the major task of cataloguing and archiving the métiers he had encountered, some of which were dying out. Accompanied by a professional photographer, he documented, illustrated and classified these, presenting his research in a series of pamphlets (one for each métier) published by the ministry. He was especially concerned with encouraging the further evolution of artisanal skills in Morocco, which, he discovered, tend to stagnate and disappear in the absence of a policy designed to validate their intrinsic worth and nurture their continued development. Accordingly, he launched competitions within each domain—saddlery, pottery, rug-making and so on—with prizes awarded so as to encourage excellence and perseverance, and uncover new talents. To further encourage and increase the practice of Morocco’s crafts traditions, Chabâa set up the Moussem National de l’Artisanat, an annual event which brought together artisans from all over the country, who were invited to exhibit and sell their products. For these exhibitions Chabâa created set and lighting designs highlighting the different participants’ products. A separate wing housed exhibitions of contemporary artists as well as meeting rooms where round-tables were held, bringing together artists, artisans and architects. Building on his previous work with the the Association Nationale des Architectes et des Urbanistes and the ENA, Chabâa also organizd a study trip to the Rissani region of southern Morocco, inviting along contemporary artists, artisans from the region, architects from the school and academics interested in questions of cultural heritage. This unique meeting resulted in a statement listing recommendations for the future of arts and crafts in the region.

Working to revise the artisanal training programs he had helped set up, Chabâa, sometimes included an architect charged with teaching technical drawing and design. He then conceived an ambitious project named the Institut Royal du Design, whose mission was to train artisan-designers capable of developing projects that would create links with industry while at the same time improving the extant conditions of production and dissemination for their work. Sadly, this project never came to fruition.

A fine illustration of the concept of the “3 A’s” is Chabâa’s work in Rome in 1990, during the building of the new Mosque of Rome (1984–1995). Chabâa again sought to bring together the traditional arts and crafts, working with Moroccan master craftsmen brought in for the project—Houcine Lamane, Kamal Bellamine and Abdelali El Kandri—who collaborated with two of the mosque’s chief architects, Paolo Portoghesi and Vittorio Gigliotti, to develop zellige tiles in an array of colors. Subsequently used in mosaics whose outstanding quality testify to the success of this “3 A” project, for his work on the project, Chabâa was awarded the title of Commander of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic in 1991.

Nadia Chabaâ

The symposium Learning From in New York explored what it means to take cultural artifacts and inscribe them within a new context, whether by nineteenth century ethnographic museums, avant-garde artist, in teaching collections, or contemporary art projects. Prior to the symposium, a group of artists, designers, curators and art historians toured museums archives and studios around New York, examining and discussing a variety of materials, ranging from Mesoamerican artefacts to the work of the mid-century artists who found inspiration in these collections. → more

This text investigates how the topological figure of the Möbius strip, famously propagated by Bauhaus proponent Max Bill, was used in Brazil within dissident artistic practices of the 1960s and 1970s as a tool for reflection on the subject, alterity and public space. The Möbius strip is revisited in this essay as a conduit for thinking critically about possible subversions of Eurocentric forms, as well as various appropriations of traditional popular culture by modern and contemporary art in Brazil. → more

This text deals with the experience of the Museum of Popular Art (MAP) and the School of Industrial Design and Handicraft, designed by the Italian-Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi, in Salvador (capital of the state of Bahia), Brazil. Such a “school-museum” is based on the capture and transformation of latent forces that exist in Brazilian popular culture. → more

No matter how distanced we are from our collective origins in systems of mutual reciprocity and exchange, these activities remain “full of rituals and rights.” It was precisely this conception of systems of exchange as intrinsically connected to magical power, ritual, and ceremony that four prominent Seattle businessmen seized upon when they invented the Golden Potlatch, a city-wide festival that rather artfully combined the just-passed prosperity of the Klondike Gold Rush with the mutual reciprocity that is the basis of “potlatch” ceremonies customary in certain Native North American societies, particularly in the northwest of the American continent. → more

In sending out the manuscript of Native Genius in Anonymous Architecture to a publisher, Sibyl Moholy-Nagy added a note on the “Genesis of the manuscript,” which is quite revealing about the intellectual trajectory that gave rise to it. She positioned herself as first and foremost a traveling observer, learning from direct contact with artefacts and buildings, curious about their histories and willing to interpret material evidence and local narratives. → more

The Mexico of President Lázaro Cárdenas del Río was a fertile ground for the development of ideological questions, especially those originating from the left. The expropriation of oil fields, mining and large estates in 1938, the refuge granted Spanish republicans and members of the International Brigades in 1939, and the accord of mutual support between the government and syndicalist organizations all favored the formation of artistic and cultural groups willing to take part in the consolidation of revolutionary ideals which, until that point, had made little progress. Among these organizations was the Taller de Gráfica Popular, the Workshop of Popular Graphics. → more

The search for the spiritual characterized Tawney’s long life, and was reflected in both the iconography and materials she used in her work. She was a regular diarist and her journals provide valuable insight into this deeply personal search. bauhaus imaginista researcher Erin Freedman interviews Executive Director of the Lenore G. Tawney Foundation, Kathleen Nugent Mangan, about Tawney's approach and work. → more

The story of Lena Bergner is relevant to the history of architecture and design on account of her career passing through different ideological and cultural contexts. Here we will discuss her life and work, focusing on her training in the Bauhaus, her time in the USSR and her time in Mexico, where, along with her husband the architect Hannes Meyer, over a ten-year period she undertook cultural projects of great importance. → more

Cristine Takuá is an indigenous philosopher, educator, and artisan who lives in the village of Rio Silveira, state of São Paulo, Brazil. She was invited to present a contemporary perspective on questions and tensions raised by interactions between the indigenous communities and the mainstream art system, as well as to address Brazil’s specific social and political context. → more

Not by nature acquisitive and certainly not art collectors, Josef and Anni Albers began in 1936 to collect Mexican figurines and other artifacts unearthed from that land’s memory. They described the country, which they first visited in 1935, as “the promised land of abstract art.” Returning to Black Mountain College Anni Albers and Alexander Reed began experimenting with everyday articles to create a strange and beautiful collection of objects of personal adornment inspired by their visit to Mexico. → more

Sibyl Moholy-Nagy understood herself as a traveling observer. In her book Native Genius in Anonymous Architecture Moholy-Nagy sought buildings that survived time because they had developed naturally out of the North American reality. In doing so she did not define one style, method or area but rather showed how builders found creative solutions to specific problems of site, climate, materials and skills. → more

The global developments that led in 1942 to the appointment of Hannes Meyer, second Bauhaus director, as head of the workshop for popular graphic art, Taller de Gráfica Popular (henceforth referred to as the TGP), made it a focal point for migrating Europeans in flight from fascism. This essay aims to shed light on how the TGP was influenced by Europeans granted asylum by Mexico before and during World War Two, and, conversely, to explore the degree to which these exiled visual artists, writers, and architects’ ideas came to be influenced by their contact with artists active in the TGP. → more

The need for a synthesis of the arts and, with this, a change of pedagogical principles, was not only present at the beginning of the twentieth century (forces that prompted the Bauhaus’s foundation), but after WWII as well, during the “Short Century”of decolonization. . This second modern movement and its relation to modernism and the vernacular, the hand made, and the everyday was vividly expressed through texts and art works published in the Moroccan quarterly magazine Souffles, published beginning in the mid-1960s by a group of writers and artists in Rabat, Casablanca and Paris. → more

Les Intégrations exemplified a specific conceptual motif, one that acted not within a single field but rather implied a relationship of interdependence between different media (visual arts and architecture) and techniques (those of graphic arts and architecture). They thus allowed for the emergence of disciplines that were not static in formation but evolving in relation to one another. The intermedial relationship they created between art and architecture raises the question of what lies "between" these disciplines: how do they communicate with each other? What are the elements of language common to this "spirit of the times," to the particular atmosphere of the late 1960s? → more

In the years when Western nations were committed in new projects of partnership, with what was then called the “Third World”, young artists and students from the Maghreb had grown up in the passionate climate of the struggle for independence, were talented, open to modernity, and eager to connect with twentieth-century international art movements, which were different in production and spirit from colonial ideology and culture. → more

I was sixteen years old when I undertook my first journey into finding a professional vocation, first in Asilah, then in Fez followed by Tétouan. 1952. Tangiers was, to me, an open book, a window on the world. The freedom of seeing, of discovering and of feeling, of weaving the narratives of my dreams. → more

Looking into the history of objects, into their original practical and social function as well as into the circumstances of their transition to European and other countries of Western civilization, the artist Kader Attia aims at conveying the full identity of the objects and to follow the traces of their disappearance that still can be discovered today and call for repair. → more

On the 24th and 25th of March 2018, we met in Rabat to participate in the first event of the bauhaus imaginista project. We were attending a workshop with the French-Algerian artist Kader Attia, surrounded by an exhibition of archival materials from artists and students from the École des Beaux Arts in Casablanca and including the Maghreb Art magazine on the walls of Le Cube — independent art space that hosted Attia's show in Rabat. → more

Paul Klee’s Carpet, 1927, creates a conundrum for scholars as it does not neatly fit the existing theoretical models concerning how European artists engage with non-Western art and culture, while at the same time opening up exciting new avenues for inquiry. → more

This is the transcript of a conversation between art historian Erin Freedman and the trans artist and scholar Sebastian De Line that took place during the bauhaus imaginista: Learning From symposium at the Goethe-Institut in New York in June 2018. → more

At the time Anni Albers wrote On Weaving in 1965, few discussions of Andean textiles “as art” had appeared in weaving textbooks, but there were numerous publications, many of which were German books published between 1880 and 1929, that documented and described their visual and technical properties. Albers almost single-handedly introduced weaving students to this ancient textile art through her writing and her artistic work. → more

Ancient and indigenous textile cultures of the Americas played a critical role in the development of the work of fiber artists who came of age in the U.S. in the late 1950s and 1960s. Anyone who has studied fiber art of this period, myself included, knows this well. They openly professed an admiration for traditions ranging from Navaho weaving, to the use of the backstrap loom in Mexico and Central America, to the ancient weaving techniques of Peru. → more

In this recorded interview, Vicuña describes how after she first learned about quipu, she immediately integrated the system into her life. Quipu, the Spanish transliteration of the word for “knot” in Cusco Quechua, is a system of colored, spun and plied or waxed threads or strings made from cotton or camelid fiber. They were used by the Inca people for a variety of administrative purposes, mainly record-keeping, and also for other ends that have now been lost to history. → more

One primary question leading up to the bauhaus imaginista workshop and symposium had concerned the extent to which Bauhaus artists had been culturally informed by and subsequently appropriated Indigenous art. This essay examines ethnographic and natural history museology and how Indigenous cultures are perceived, translated and exhibited through Westernized perspectives that are informed by a philosophical subject-object divide. → more

“I felt as if I had made a step and maybe a new form. These evolved from a study of Peruvian techniques, out of twining and twisting. Out of that came my new way of working, of dividing and separating the piece.” Lenore Tawney’s “Woven Forms” are not purpose-built in a (Western) crafts sense; they move beyond traditional European rules of weaving and attempt to approach an indigenous attitude towards craft and technique. This essay shows how Tawney charted her own unique path in fiber art by linking Amerindian impulses with Taoist concepts of space and Bauhaus ideas. → more